Alienation and Anomie

Here's a boring little narrative post -

I woke up way too early today, at 6 am, for APAIE. It was my job to go collect the Board of Directors from their hotel and I was to be there at 7.15 am. Suffice it to say, it was 7 am and I was still standing - or pacing, rather - on Pasir Panjang Road cursing under my breath at the dearth of cabs. One thing I've learnt from my Texas Aggies is that things always work out fine and that i worry unnecessarily way too much. So I took a breath and called information for a cab number. I called them twice, twice hanging up on then to hail a taxi off the road. Fortunately, I successfully hopped into a cab at 7.10 am. At 7.25 I reached the Meritus Mandarin and still had to wait for them to arrive. hah. See, everything ultimately works out fine. Breeeathe.

I like mornings, I really do. I like the quiet of it. How the sounds of the day slowly creep into your consciousness as they awaken. I like the still of things, how cool the breeze is. I like feeling like I still have most of the day ahead of me, ready to be conquered.

I don't like people. Increasingly, the ones who cross my mind and unfortunately, my path have tended to get on my nerves. My patience is short these days, my zen threshold has fallen considerably. I have many theories, some of which I will share at some pointg or other. I've just written Robin an e-mail expressing some of my many grievances. I miss him, really. He's one of the few exchange students I really got on well with. We had this argument in 2004 about group dynamics, and how one does things one may not necessarily enjoy to keep the privilege of membership and the benefits associated with that membership. Being the naive idealist I was back then, I really rejected that notion. I thought it was conniving, deceitful and transactional. And insincere. I've grown up since then, crossed over to the Dark Side of Rationality and the realm of Blake's Experience.

Here's what I think now: it's a necessary evil for those who don't have time to build sincere and deep, meaningful soulful relationships with people. See, those kinds of interactions take time and commitment and develop. And people these days just don't have that. These days, it's all about quantity. I think it's perhaps symptomatic of the modern society - I hesitate to say ills thereof, but deep inside I think that's what it is - the whole concept of disposability. My 3 Main Evils: Disposable, Replaceable and Dispensable. This year has seen me turn over all my Blakean ideals. Back then, I told Rob "If you don't want to go, don't. We'll call you the next time we do something and see if you wanna join us. See, if your friends really like you, that's what they'll do." Relationships between people these days are very ephemeral. From what I hear, Habermas agrees with me on this. Not having read him, I can't comment. Anyway, it's like a disposable sachet of friendship. Use and discard as required. When another need arises, you pick another one out of a box.

I must say, it works for many people. Alas, I'm not one of them. I've never been the most sociable person around. And I don't do well in crowds. I don't know how to fight for attention, I don't know how to hold a crowd. I do deep conversations, probing of souls. Getting to know a person. Or so I thought that was who I was. I'd always wondered what it would be like to be a social butterfly, to know lots of people. Now that I think about it, that's what last semester was. I met maaany people and never really got to know them well. It's hard to be special to someone's life when they've got a gazillion other people in their lives. I think perhaps this is the source of my discontent.

The thing is, it's awesome to have that person and I do have a couple of core friends, as opposed to "oh-i'll-sit-and-eat-with-you" people. But when you're in a group of core friends and you feel like you're sitting on the periphery of that, I guess that sucks.

And I think sometimes that when you're someone who is slightly introverted in a group of people who share commonalities that you don't, you're gonna be unfortunately marginalised, even if nobody intended for it to be so. Alienated. Anomie.